Straight Outta Melbourne

A funny thing happened while I was out of the country recently. (And I know I keep banging on about this travel thing, but I'm still in the darkest depths of the back-in-the-real-world denial phase, so cut me some slack, okay?)

Anyway, while I was off searching for meaning amidst the futility of existence, a new genre up and created itself down Melbourne way. You've probably heard of The Melbourne Sound by now. And if you're anything like me, you've lost yourself in its throbbing sub-bass pulses, panoramic sound effects, delicate tinkling melodies, and rhythms that fluctuate between rolling four-on-the-floor house and halftime breakbeats using snare hits so crisp that they'll shatter vertebrae from 20 paces.

Oh, forgive me. That was the first time I remember something electronic from the southern capital being dubbed The Melbourne Sound, as pumped from the studios of Phil K, Luke Chable, Nubreed et al when post-millennium tension was still a thing. That's not to be confused with the other Melbourne Sound, being the dirty electro house that Dirty South and TV Rock took global somewhere in the middle of 2006.

[And in proof that it's handy to have an old raver lying around, I'm also reliably informed that M-Town's Vicious label spearheaded its own “chugga chugga house & rave” Melbourne Sound in the early '90s.]

No, this is The Melbourne Sound of 2013, somewhat reminiscent of the off-beat basslines and cheesy hoover leads that dominated Wild FM playlists circa 1998, though a little more Klubbheads than Meet Her At The Love Parade.

It was very popular then, and by all reports it's going gangbusters again now. My ambivalence to its existence is equally consistent. But let's just say that if a strictly hypothetical situation arose where I were held at gunpoint behind the decks by a crazed punter brandishing a smartphone with “GOT NE OV TEH MELBUN SOUNDZ BRA” on the display, I'd be turning to my mate Timmy Trumpet and his mate Chardy to save the day.

It's not the first time that a sonic blueprint/descriptor has been re- (or is that mis-)appropriated to the chagrin of those old enough to be around last time. There was a similar gnashing of teeth in 1994 when Green Day and The Offspring brought 'punk' kicking and screaming into the mainstream, the original safety pin nosering brigade arguing that this MTV-friendly punk permutation had about as much to do with the ideals of the Sex Pistols and Fugazi as Highlander II: The Quickening had with Highlander.

As a 17-year-old, stage diving to Come Out And Play at my high school formal, I couldn't have given less of a fuck what sticker the marketing boffins slapped on it. I was angsty; this music was the release valve.

It does call into focus once more the ever shortening cycles in dance music revivalism, something I touched on last year while getting my Cross Colours on to Tensnake's Mainline. As first electro house, and now dubstep, slowly but surely redlined – both sonically and in terms of popularity – the next generation coming through have gone mining the past in search of (I can't believe I'm about to use this acronym) EDM's missing soul.

Disclosure are the obvious example, and it's easy to see why they're as beloved by older critics as they are by their own demographic. I love the way they bring back the naïveté of 1989-91's dance-pop boom by way of the best bits of late '90s garage – I suspect kids love them because their music is an antidote to the increasingly atonal fare that constitutes main stage festival music. The fact that they're a talented pair of fuckers with songwriting skills beyond their years also does their cause no harm.

The Melbourne Sound 3.0 is just the product of another archaeological dig, except its progenitors have mined a seam of dance music's past that those of us who endured it 15 years ago would rather forget.

And the kids having epiphanies to the sounds of Melbournia probably couldn't give less of a fuck.